


Ebb The Tide

by greenkangaroo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Time Travel, War, chouji never asked for this, when you go back in time you can cheat at shogi and your bff doesn't notice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:16:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7865332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenkangaroo/pseuds/greenkangaroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were a lot of things that sucked about time-space jutsus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ebb The Tide

There were a lot of things that sucked about time-space jutsus. 

For example, it sucked that he had been the one caught in it, not Shikamaru or Sakura, Kakashi or Neji, hell even Gaara. Naruto! Naruto would have been preferable. Anyone with the brains to know what to do and what NOT to do. There were rules, weren't there? Time paradoxes, overlapping timelines, what have you? If there _were_ no one had thought to pass them along to Chouji. 

It sucked that when he opened his eyes on a warm and sunny hill (mid-july, the best cloudwatching chipmunching weather in a Konoha that was _still standing holy fucking shit-_ ) his first thought was that he had, indeed, died. 

It sucked that everyday things- noises, sudden movements- were triggering responses that Chouji had built up over a period of five years of running and killing nearly everything he came across, him and the sixty other prisoners who had escaped during the mass breakout at one of the prison camps. 

(Captain, they called him Captain and how funny was that, he wasn’t a leader. He was Chouji, he was the fists, he was the backup, he was the 'punch it until it stops moving' guy and he couldn’t lead anyone but he'd managed to keep his motley crew out of the hellhole they'd crawled from, and the enemy just kept sending people after him so clearly he was doing something right-) 

It REALLY sucked to be twelve again, knowing everything he knew now without any proper way to execute shit. His chakra reserves were pitiful, his stamina was awful, he'd had to pretend to punch someone who called him fat and had Ino always sounded that screechy?

(Of course she had, and of course she did, but when you lost something even the most annoying aspects of it become precious beyond all reason.) 

Yeah. A lot of things sucked about time travel. 

The one thing that didn’t was this. 

Shikamaru squinted at the shogi board in front of him, and then looked up at his best friend. 

“Why did you do that?” He asked, and Chouji just smiled. 

"Your move," he said, not unkindly, because Shikamaru was a genius and would always be a genius but all those years of war gave Chouji a somewhat unfair advantage in the field of tactics. 

Chouji lost, of course, but he could tell by the set of Shikamaru’s brow that he was much closer to maybe sort of winning than the Nara ever expected him to be. 

(and someday this ability, this genius at reading the genius, will bring him and his sixty missing-presumed ninja back to the front, back to the fray, because he always knows what Shikamaru will do even before Shikamaru does, and they will call him Captain and he’ll almost feel like he deserves it.) 

(And no he’s not as smart as Shikamaru and he’s not as determined as Gaara or Naruto, but he’s the one stuck here, a thirty year old in a twelve year old body.)

(This time Asuma is still alive and the war will come, he knows that, but if he’s careful, if he’s slow, he can ebb the tide.)

(He’s an Akimichi; he’s big enough for that.)

**Author's Note:**

> I am inept at writing and finishing long fics, so this is what you get. Strictly speaking there's no proof that Akatsuki would have anything like prison camps.


End file.
